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Microsoft enlists web security pariah Adobe to help build Internet Explorer-killer Spartan

Don't panic: The Photoshop giant's doing the pretty bits, not the secure bits

Microsoft has revealed it's working with Adobe on some aspects of project Spartan, its replacement browser that will confine Internet Explorer to the Antique Code Show.

When one contemplates Adobe's contribution to browsers, it's hard not to think of the carnage its Flash plugin has wrought with a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of flaws.

Microsoft doesn't mention the war in its post about the collaboration, which it says has been established because Adobe has helped open-source web rendering engines and so knows its way around the browser. Adobe's “Web Platform Team” is therefore contributing to Spartan “in the areas of layout, typography, graphic design and motion”.

The collaboration can be seen in the current build of Spartan that landed in the March Technical Preview of Windows 10, which apparently supports new web graphics things called “CSS gradient midpoints” and the “<feBlend> blend modes”. Both make it easier to describe colour on a web page.

Microsoft says it's working with Adobe because it has a "... goal to bring the team and technologies behind our web platform closer to the community of developers and other vendors who are also working to move the Web forward."

Redmond's therefore promising to reveal other collaborators on Spartan, and other bits of its "web platform", in coming weeks. ®

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